Common infective fevers and the use of disinfectants with notes on the health of children. / By William Squire.

  • Squire, William Stevens 1825-1899.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Common infective fevers and the use of disinfectants with notes on the health of children. / By William Squire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    19/64 page 15
    fire aids ventilation. Not only should a screen be interposed between the door and the patieuf, but a smaller screen on a stand, or perhaps only a towel rack, can be so placed as to intercept the free diifusion by coughing, or otherwise, oE exhalations from the patient throughout the room. No article of food is to be kept in tlie room. The air can be thoroughly changed and the windows opened while the child is covered. When two children are treated in the same room for infectious illness, they should occupy separate beds in a large room with 500 cubic feet of space to each; they should be placed some distance apart, or on either side of the fireplace, so that the air current from door or window to the fire may pass between them; the separation thus eifected is complete enough—aided by some interposed screen, with careful management and separate service, even when only one room is available—to enable a susceptible child to occupy one side of the room, and to keep in health, while on the other side a child goes through all the stages of an infectious illness. If only a small room is available the patients must be more frequently moved into a second room. Both rooms must be cleared as far as possible, thoroughly cleaned, and alternately purified; sometimes fumigation or a coat of limewash can be applied in the interval, and by some of these means mentioned the infectious period of many diseases has been much shortened; the duration of whooping cough has been reduced to three weeks by filling the room with sulphur fumes for a few hours, the patients being removed till it is cleared and warmed. Free ventilation with neatness and cleanliness is at the root of all thoi'ough disinfection. The action of any agent absolutely destructive to infective pai'ticles is necessarily very limited, both as to the extent and the conditions in which it can be applied ; for each one of them in full intensity is also destructive to organized matter or to life. In trusting to germicides of more moderate powers, even those only antiseptic, or to the promoter's of chemical change as our aids to disin- fection, it is well to employ some whose powers can be judged of by sight or by smell; yet whatever disinfectant of this class is used, at whatever strength, its ]:)resence in the air of the room ought not to be so marked as to mask the sense of freshness in the air. It is not only useless to load the air of the sick chamber with any disinfectant, unless free ingress of air is provided, but positively injurious to the patient. The disinfectants used may be either Carbolic acid, a teaspoonful to a pint of water, or Permanganate of Potash, two grains (equalling a tea- spoonful of Condy's fluid) to a pint of water; these are cheap and their use obvious to the senses, for the one is made evident by its disagreeable odour, the other by its well-marked colour. Carbolic acid has the advantageof not discolouring anything in which or to which it is applied, and may be used to cover all refuse for removal from the room, or be ready to receive expectoration, &c. When sprayed about the room, it is not so refreshing as the diluted Condy ; this latter may again be diluted by one
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